Gouverneur Morris holds the pen behind the most famous words in American government, yet his life reads like an adventure novel. Born into the immense wealth of the Morrisania estate, he entered King’s College at 12, sided with the Patriots against his loyalist mother, and cast the tie-breaking vote that defeated the Conway Cabal’s plot against George Washington. After a carriage accident cost him his leg, he became the most talkative delegate at the Constitutional Convention.

This episode explores how Morris rewrote the preamble to read We, the People of the United States, his fierce attacks on slavery alongside his elitist distrust of the poor, and his survival as the only foreign minister who stayed in Paris through the Reign of Terror. We also cover the Erie Canal, the Manhattan street grid, his marriage to Nancy Randolph, his support for the Hartford Convention and his gruesome death.

• How a single tie-breaking vote by Morris saved Washington’s command in 1778
• Why changing the preamble helped invent the idea of national American citizenship
• The contradiction of an outspoken abolitionist who wanted to limit voting to property owners
• The peg leg bluff that turned a Paris mob from hostility to cheers
• Morris’s role in the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 and the Erie Canal Commission